to help us to understand and deconstruct capitalism in order to create a sustainable and peaceful social system.

We’ve lived so long under the spell of hierarchy—from god-kings to feudal lords to party bosses—that only recently have we awakened to see not only that “regular” citizens have the capacity for self-governance, but that without their engagement our huge global crises cannot be addressed. The changes needed for human society simply to survive, let alone thrive, are so profound that the only way we will move toward them is if we ourselves, regular citizens, feel meaningful ownership of solutions through direct engagement. Our problems are too big, interrelated, and pervasive to yield to directives from on high.—Frances Moore Lappé, excerpt from Time for Progressives to Grow Up

Thursday, September 15, 2016

Toxic Slime Spreads Across Oceans as Climate Disruption Continues

The author once again does a survey of humans' destruction of their habitat (and many other species) and reports on a variety of evidence that contradicts the easy assurances we receive from international government authorities such as the 2015 Paris agreement which made a number of promises to do better in the future.

I think an honest interpretation of this survey shows that we are well on the road to our extinction. Jamail is much more restrained by writing:

Given that humans continue to inject over 30 billion tons of CO2 into the atmosphere annually, and the fact that what is already there has us locked into (conservatively) another 1.5-3C of warming in the coming decades, the new climate reality is upon us.

So it's just another climate reality?

In fact, restraint seems to be the style of nearly all reports of climate destabilization which is usually referred to merely as "climate change". The term "Anthropogenic climate disruption" (ACD) only suggests a disruption from what is the usual. Jamail, like many others, ascribes ACD as "due to the intensely rapid industrialization" which hides the agents behind this event--the rise of the ruling capitalist classes and those countries like China who use capitalist engines for economic development.

Then there is this statement which hides the eventual extinction of humans:

"We need to phase out CO2 emissions and we need to change our pattern of using fossil fuels if we want to save the Earth," John Vos, a member of the Dutch Labour Party, told the Yale Climate Connection.

Of course, there is absolutely no doubt that the Earth will survive--it's only humans and many other species that face annihilation. It seems to me that such restraint is another more polite form of denial.

Not to worry--we can travel to other planets when we are finished destroying our habitat on Earth. ;-) That is why there is so much current excitement about space exploration (see this and this).